Freelancing

Monday Spark: Try something new for 30 days. [VIDEO]

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new for 30 days calendarThis is Matt Cutts’ idea, as you’ll see from the video below.

He talks for only a few minutes, because it doesn’t take long to share his simple but powerful idea.

Matt changed his life by giving himself a series of 30-day challenges. He went without sugar for 30 days. He cycled to work for 30 days. He wrote a novel in 30 days.

The idea is powerful, because he’s not trying to force himself to do something new for every day of the rest of his life. He is talking about just 30 days. That’s a much less threatening idea.

One of the things he described really stuck with me. He showed a picture he had taken during his 30-day challenge to take a photo every day. He made the point that he remembered exactly where he took that photo, and goes on to say that by doing these challenges he now has far more vivid memories of how each month passes.

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Monday Spark: It’s OK not to be the best at what you do.

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don't have to be the winnerIn our culture we are under a lot of pressure to be the best. When we sit exams, go to job interviews, have job reviews, come up for promotion…and so on.

We also live in a culture that is obsessed with competition, and seeing who comes out on top.

Who is going to win the Superbowl? Who is the best golfer in the world? Who is the best supermodel? Who has the best garden on your street? Whose kid did best in the school play?

In other words, we are under pressure to be winners. If we are not winners, well, we are losers. And in North American culture, nothing is worse than being a loser.

As a freelancer, you need to distance yourself from this cultural narrative.

If you stress about not being the best, or not being a winner, then you’ll undermine your self-confidence.

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Monday Spark: Are you paying attention to the wrong fears?

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fear of failureThis could be a huge aha moment for you…so keep reading, and then watch the video at the end.

During the video author Karen Thompson Walker talks about fear, and how our fears are often expressed in the form of stories in our minds. If you are scared of earthquakes, you see a short story, or movie clip of that fear in your mind – the shaking, things falling off shelves, buildings falling, people being trapped and crushed.

She then talks about the decisions made by a group of sailors back in 1820. Their ship, the Essex, was sunk by a whale and the crew ended up in the lifeboats, over a thousand miles from the nearest land.

They didn’t aim for the nearest island, because they had heard there were cannibals there. They took a route that was almost twice as long, during which they knew they would probably run out of water and food.

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Monday Spark: Make yourself accountable to someone you would hate to disappoint.

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sign of accountabilityWe have dreams. We make ourselves promises. We make resolutions.

And…all too often, absolutely nothing happens or changes.

When nothing changes, we are quick to find excuses. We find a way to make other people or circumstances the cause of our failure to take action and move forward. If all else fails, we can simply say something wooly like, “The time wasn’t right. Maybe next year.”

It’s easy to get away with this kind of non-action, because we keep our plans and promises to ourselves. In fact, if we hard work on it, we can even persuade ourselves that we didn’t really promise ourselves to do anything at all. (As humans we’ll go to almost any lengths to protect our self-esteem.)

One step forward is to make yourself accountable by letting other people know what you plan to change or achieve. In fact, there are whole websites devoted to sharing your goals with other people. At this time of year, people also share their resolutions on social media sites like Facebook.

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Monday Spark: Don’t have time to network in person? I bet you do.

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hand grinder networkingOne of my Christmas gifts this year was a hand coffee grinder. This is a great little device for grinding coffee beans by hand.

Why bother when I have an electric grinder? Because from time to time I like to actually pay attention when I make coffee. Instead of being a process that is automated and rushed, making coffee becomes something I focus on, pay attention to, and enjoy. I can feel the beans being crushed as I turn the handle. The experience becomes real and physical…something I am doing, rather than something I get done by a machine.

Anyway, I posted a photo of my coffee grinder on my coffee site, and within minutes someone left a comment.

Here is what he wrote:

“Very nice article but I must say manual coffee grinding is a thing of the past. With all these improvements in technology everything is going automated. Burr coffee grinders are in and manual coffee grinders are out!”

Someone else wrote:

“Nice idea, but I don’t have time for that.”

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Freelancers: Repeat after me, “I am a Rolex”.

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rolex perceived valueIn a fair world, every freelancer would be paid what they actually deserve. But, of course, it isn’t a fair world. So you have to do something to make sure you get paid at least what you truly deserve, and preferably more.

As an example, I spoke with two different coaching clients a few weeks ago, both of whom had just picked up projects to create a monthly e-newsletter for a client. One was charging $200 per issue, the other was charging $2,000.

Was the second guy ten times better than the first? Not at all.

The difference was that the second freelancer genuinely felt his work was worth $2,000. So that’s what he estimated, and that’s what he got.

The value of your work has less than you think to do with its real value, and more to do with its perceived value. That perception resides both in your own mind and in your client’s mind.

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